Kimberly Reed

Music director Jonathan Khuner ’70, M.A. ’73, has been a shaping force for West Edge Opera company since the mid-1980s, when he began conducting for this vibrant troupe. In his choice of repertoire, his own tastes and uncompromising outlook helped define the company’s aesthetic, first in its original incarnation as Berkeley Opera and now as West Edge.

When most people think of Watergate, they likely think of the hotel break-in, the Saturday Night Massacre, or the Nixon tapes. But few know that, at its heart, Watergate was a campaign finance scandal. The Watergate Hotel burglars were paid with campaign funds, and the subsequent investigation uncovered millions in illegal payments to the Nixon White House by corporations—some of which arrived in bags of cash.

Posted on June 4, 2018 - 4:15pm

Latest Issue: Spring 2020

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In One Man’s Search for Baseball’s Underdogs: Having been only an off-and-on baseball fan, I really enjoyed reading this article. When I first started going out with my now husband, we went to a lot of A’s games and what I...

— Roberta Brooks :: 5/8/2020 12:40pm

In Is ‘They’ Here to Stay?: I agree, the word “cool” is a great pick for word of the 20th century. “Media” to me is also a good candidate. Thanks for an enlightening read. Will look for the new podcast in the summer.

CALIFORNIA Classic

August Vollmer, the City of Berkeley’s first police chief and a pioneer of criminal justice classes at UC Berkeley, was an early voice on policing practices. He advocated for the hiring of black cops and extolled “scientific police work,” not rough justice. “Society needs and must somehow obtain truly exceptional men to discharge police duties,” he wrote. Vollmer may have naïve to think that police officers could be the enlightened übermenschen he envisioned, but he had a vision, one engendered by good intentions and an innate sense of social and racial equity.